Saturday, November 8, 2014

The Wooden Finger Five - November 2014

No. 5 No Way – Young Fathers Who the - ? Young Fathers’ first album
‘Dead’ recently won the Mercury Prize
for ‘best’ British or Irish album of the year; apparently it was time to reward
hip-hop acts from Scotland. I thought it less deserving than Bombay Bicycle Club, but hell, it was more deserving than Royal Blood. For some reason I
like the album tracks where the title is repeatedly chanted in the back-up
vocals, such as ‘Mmmh Mmmh’ (it delivers what it promises), and opener ‘No
Way’. Overall I found Young Fathers’ music to be OK, and if they do point towards the future of music it’s not in a bad spot, but I think I am still a bit
more inclined to your classic rock structures.

No. 4 Satan Speeds Up – King Gizzard & The Lizard WizardFor example, like King Gizzard & The
Lizard Wizard, who as their name suggests have based their entire sound around late-‘60s/early-‘70s
psychedelic rock. They also seem to want to follow a late-‘60s/early-‘70s album
release schedule, with five albums in the past three years. I imagine ‘Satan
Speeds Up’ as the soundtrack to some Haight-Ashbury cartoon featuring a giant,
long-legged red devil wandering across a dark landscape, scaring hippies out of
their wits. There’s some Jethro Tull-like flute thrown into the mix for good
measure. Plus, King Gizzard’s album cover is so striking that I even selected
it as an image for this post over the next group’s, who would barely ever get
bumped when it comes to selecting favourite album cover images.No. 3 Lovely Rita – The Flaming Lips,
featuring Tegan & Sara, and Stardeath, and White DwarvesPsychedelic I said? The idea of the
Flaming Lips covering the Beatles’ era-defining ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band’ is like …

Miley Cyrus’ appearance on ‘A Day In The
Life’ has gained the most notice,
and while she does a decent job on my one-time favourite track, I prefer Tegan
& Sara breathing some life into Paul McCartney’s ‘Lovely Rita’ meter maid
ditty. It seems more like what the track might have been like if it had
originally been written in 2014, whereas some of the other efforts on the album
seem more like The Flaming Lips trying to pull apart and inject some more ‘crazy’
into the Beatles’ tunes. I wonder though is the gender reversal in singing
about scoring with a female parking inspector intentional, or did the Lips not
even really think about it? (Maybe I’m the only person who’s even given this
more than a passing thought…)

The Guardian did a pretty good article
on the Beijing indie music scene recently, and it got me to checking out some of the
bands mentioned in the article. Most are worth a listen, but the shining light
for me is ‘perhaps China’s best indie band’
Carsick Cars. Each of their first three albums is full of good fun rock. But
listening to them has reinforced that lyrics
barely matter for me as long as the tune is good; the band usually don’t
sing in English, particularly in their early stuff, and even when they do I can
barely understand them. And even if I could understand the lyrics they don’t
seem like they would be revelatory – one of their most popular songs ‘Zhongnanhai’
seems to be about nothing more than smoking a brand of cigarette. Regardless,
there are heaps of good tracks on their latest album ‘3’ – ‘Wild
Grass’ and especially ‘She
Will Wait’ are favourites – really, I could have filled this whole post
only with songs from Carsick Cars and the next band, but if I had to recommend
one I would pick ‘Reaching The Light’… just.

When talking about And You Will Know Us
By The Trail Of Dead’s classic
album ‘Source Tags and Codes’ earlier this year I said that every track was
listenable, and no track stood out. That description pretty much applies to
their latest album, ‘IX’ as well – in fact, it pretty much applies to their
entire back catalogue more so than any band I can think of. There are rock
solid tunes all of the way through this album – how do I pick a favourite? ‘The
Dragonfly Queen’ is reminiscent of Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys, but also
sounds better than almost anything that band has ever written. ‘Bus Lines’ is
the classic bar song that will probably never actually catch on in bars, albeit
classic bar songs do not tend to have the wall of noise that Trail of Dead
attach (as they generally do) to the end of this track. The track that sticks
in my head most though and the one I tend to play first up is actually the
single ‘A Million Random Digits’ so I will go with that. The whole album is
worth a listen however; it’s surprisingly almost as good as ‘Source Tags and
Codes’ was.